Ramon Barragan, founder of Barragan’s chain of Mexican restaurants, dies

When Tony Barragan worked at his family’s Echo Park Mexican restaurant in the 1970s, he regularly heard longtime customers tell newcomers about the story of his father.

How Ramon Barragan came to Los Angeles as a 16-year-old immigrant. How he went from dishwasher to head chef at a restaurant run by someone from his small hometown of Tecuala, Nayarit. How Barragan opened up a spot bearing his last name in 1961 at a former coffee shop that seated only 24. How he saved enough money to buy six storefronts next door and expanded Barragan’s so it grew into a sprawling palace that could seat 300 in its two bars, banquet room and patio.

“Customers would offer like a guided tour in a museum, because it wasn’t just a restaurant to them, it was a human phenomenon,” said Tony. “They would talk about how they loved the food, and then point at us. ‘Look, this is the son! That’s Ramon!’”

Barragan’s was part of a group of Mexican restaurants on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park and Silver Lake run by immigrants from Nayarit that introduced traditional Mexican dishes like cocido and sopes to Angelenos in sit-down environments beyond the Eastside. Ramon and his children eventually opened Barragan’s in Burbank and Glendale, but it was the original one that became part of L.A.’s culinary landscape, that a 1983 Times review praised for offering “very, very good … Mexican dishes not commonly seen in restaurants rather than being confined to the usual taco-enchilada combinations.”

In its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, the Echo Park Barragan’s attracted long lines, celebrity regulars like Jackson Browne and even a visit from England’s Prince Philip, who arrived one night with security to eat “lots of guacamole and shmooze [sic] with the waiter about green cards,” according to a 1984 LA Weekly story. Once the hype died down and crowds moved on to other styles of Mexican food, Barragan’s still attracted longtimers with its stiff margaritas and reliably delicious meals, all based on Ramon’s recipes that called for freshly made sauces and limited the “ingredients out of cans to tomatoes and maybe olives,” according to his daughter, Carmen.

Barragan’s in Glendale on Thursday, August 8, 2019.

(Tim Berger / Glendale News Press)

The Barragan’s patriarch died April 13 of natural causes at his home in Duarte, surrounded by family. He was 94.

He was born in 1930 to a father who was an itinerant salesman and a mother who ran a small store. Barragan inherited their entrepreneurial streak, hawking cheese in surrounding villages for a quesero when he was 12. But life in Tecuala was hard, and Ramon had aspirations of moving to the United States to work for Natalia Barraza, a friend of his parents who operated a successful Mexican restaurant in downtown L.A. called the Nayarit.

“He had that vision that this lady from Nayarit had come [to the U.S.] and built something,” said Tony. “He wanted to tap into that.”

Ramon helped Barraza open a second Nayarit in Echo Park in 1951 and eventually became the head chef. He also convinced a niece to start her own Mexican restaurant on Sunset, La Villa Taxco, which eventually became its own successful chain and beloved L.A. institution. Soon after, he opened Barragan’s just a few blocks down from the Nayarit with seed money from Barraza and borrowing against his home, which was a mile away.

Slender but tough, he slowly transitioned the menu from a mix of American and Mexican American classics in favor of guisados (stews) and soups that appealed to Echo Park’s growing Mexican and Chicano community. Working double shifts at a restaurant that was open six days a week in the early years from 7 in the morning to 10 at night, Tony and his siblings remember a father devoted to his restaurant and customers.

“When you watched him cook, he would watch the flame to make sure it was perfect,” he said. “There was a service mentality to my father. He was here to serve mankind, and it was to serve delicious hot food.”

“He wanted his waitresses to have their lipstick on and their shoes shined,” said Carmen. “He wanted perfection from his employees and his children.”

But she and her siblings also remember a tender side to their father, someone who enrolled them in Catholic schools for a better education, tried to treat them to doughnuts every morning or sneaked off on shopping trips “so we could own two pairs of shoes instead of one,” according to Carmen. Ramon also encouraged his workers to advance at Barragan’s or mentored them about how to branch out on their own.

The Barragan story was told by USC history professor Natalia Molina in her 2022 book “A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community.” The granddaughter of Natalia Barraza, Molina and her family frequented the original Barragan’s as a child. As an adult, Barragan’s was a favorite place for drinks before or after a game at Dodger Stadium, just a few blocks east. The MacArthur fellow had fond memories of the man she called Tío Ramon sitting at a stool between the kitchen and counter to “vigilar [keep watch],” just like her grandmother taught him.

“We take it for granted, the cultural work that my grandma and Ramon did to have Mexican food have a seat at the table” in Los Angeles, Molina told The Times, referring to their spots in her book as “urban anchors” where immigrants were able to create and foster a community in their new country. She and others were heartbroken when the original Barragan’s closed in 2013, the last of the original Mexican restaurants on Sunset run by Nayarit alumni.

“If it was just about the food, you’d say, ‘OK, I can just go to another Barragan’s,’” Molina said. “But it represented, ‘We’re here, we’re seen.’ For that to go away it, felt like a real loss.”

The last Barragan’s remaining is in Burbank and run by Ramon’s son Armando. In his later years, Ramon liked to stop by to chat with workers, many of whom had worked with his family for decades, and enjoy his birthdays with the meals that earned the Barragans their American dream.

“We have customers who ate at the original location 40 years ago and they taste the same food, and they’re just so happy,” Armando said. “And all credit goes to my dad insisting we never change any of his recipes.”

Ramon Barragan is survived by his second wife, Josie; his children Frank, Tony, Armando, Carmen, Grace Douglass and Rita Hiller; 17 grandchildren; and multiple great-grandchildren. Services were private.